critical facultycrit-i-cal fac-ul-ty
A good working definition would be: The ability to mentally evaluate information, statements, or propositions, to determine if they are accurate, true, or likely.
dojodo-jo
A school for training in Japanese arts of self-defense, such as judo and karate.
On The Critical Faculty:“It is our only guarantee against delusion, deception, superstition, and misapprehension of ourselves and our earthly circumstances.” William Graham Sumner

Sunday, 15 July 2007

Can the BBC be trusted?

The BBC has finally gone a step too far. I have generally defended it against those who call for it’s abolition but I now feel less inclined and the reason?

The controversy over the manufacturing of a ‘tiff’ between the queen and photographer.

Anyone of moderate intelligence will find it very difficult to accept that cutting various clips together out of chronological order to manufacture a story could in any way be an accident. Someone somewhere in all probability knew exactly what they were doing.

It appears in this instance an independent production company called RDF Television actually edited the trailer. If the BBC don’t permanently publicly disassociate themselves from the company, all of it’s directors and anyone who worked on the editing of the documentary then they can only be seen as ambivalent towards honest reporting.

Then there is the controller of BBC1, Peter Fincham. Apparently being supported by the BBC hierarchy. There was something quite unpleasant in the way he stoked things in the first place smugly suggesting that the Queen had "lost it" and walked out in a "huff".

It seems they have also done something similar to Gordon Brown. Apparently they are also planning to produce some sort of dramatisation concerning Paula Yates life, now she is not here to defend herself. A documentary is one thing, but making stuff up to spice a story up, as the appear to be planning is beyond the pale.

There is also the matter of the BBC ‘5 Live’ website carrying anti-Semitic comment apparently based on or originating from “The Talmud Unmasked”, a core anti-Semitic text written at the end of the 19th Century by Justin Praniatis.

The comment goes: ”Zionism is a racist ideology where Jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths. This is found in the Talmud.

It also claims the anti-Semitic ’Baba Mezia’ propaganda is true.

the BBC feel this is okApparently justifying it with “we have decided that it does not contravene the House Rules and are going to leave it on site”.

The BBC is supported by a special Tax Televisions called the licence fee.

It is staffed by people who are largely unrepresentative of the country as a whole. The staff having a profile that is more urban, left wing, younger and does not match the mix of the population it serves racially either. This would not really be desirable in a private broadcasting company. It is unacceptable in a publicly funded one.

The only justification the BBC ever had was the Reithian public service ethic that educated and provided honest, objective and unbiased news reporting. The BBC used to have a worldwide reputation for doing that. It has largely lost it.

If the BBC can not get it’s own house in order - and it looks very much as if it can, or will, not then the government needs to step in and reshape it, root and branch.

That or stop forcing the population to subsidise this cuckoo in the nest through taxation.